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Note inspiration for this script to give credit where it's due

Message ID 20250711201336.2077507-1-bkuhn@sfconservancy.org
State Accepted
Headers show
Series Note inspiration for this script to give credit where it's due | expand

Commit Message

Bradley M. Kuhn July 11, 2025, 8:13 p.m. UTC
There is some confusion in the Git log of this file.  Specifically,
the commit message on 7b7f1702 incorrectly indicates that there was
"potential fear" about copyright infringement.

Upon review of this situation, there is, in my opinion, no concern of
copyright infringement here.  This is not legal advice; it is my
opinion based of years of work on copyright policy for FOSS.

However, Elliott Mitchell's idea was obviously helpful as inspiration
in writing this script and deserves credit.  Ideas alone, however,
are not to my knowledge copyrightable anywhere in the world.

Signed-off-by: Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn@sfconservancy.org>
---
 scripts/kernel_bump.sh | 3 +++
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)

Comments

Bradley M. Kuhn July 11, 2025, 9:43 p.m. UTC | #1
To give some extra context on this patch that I sent earlier today:

I work for Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) as our Policy Fellow.
OpenWrt is, as many of you know, a member project of SFC.

Some of the leaders of OpenWrt asked me and my colleagues to review this
situation regarding the file `scripts/kernel_bump.sh`.  As you can see in my
commit message:

> [T]he commit message on 7b7f1702 incorrectly indicates that there was
> "potential fear" about copyright infringement.

> Upon review of this situation, there is, in my opinion, no concern of
> copyright infringement here.  This is not legal advice; it is my opinion
> based of years of work on copyright policy for FOSS.

> However, Elliott Mitchell's idea was obviously helpful as inspiration in
> writing this script and deserves credit.  Ideas alone, however, are not to
> our knowledge copyrightable anywhere in the world.

IOW, our conclusion is that the situation is fully resolved, but we
nevertheless recommend that a thank-you to Elliott for the idea (in the file
itself) is appropriate.

Thanks for your consideration of my patch to resolve this matter.  I would
welcome `Signed-Off-By`s from others who were involved with work related to
`scripts/kernel_bump.sh` if you're willing.

Thanks!
Denver Gingerich July 12, 2025, 6:41 a.m. UTC | #2
On Fri, Jul 11, 2025 at 01:13:36PM -0700, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
> There is some confusion in the Git log of this file.  Specifically,
> the commit message on 7b7f1702 incorrectly indicates that there was
> "potential fear" about copyright infringement.
> 
> Upon review of this situation, there is, in my opinion, no concern of
> copyright infringement here.  This is not legal advice; it is my
> opinion based of years of work on copyright policy for FOSS.
> 
> However, Elliott Mitchell's idea was obviously helpful as inspiration
> in writing this script and deserves credit.  Ideas alone, however,
> are not to my knowledge copyrightable anywhere in the world.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn@sfconservancy.org>

Please add my Signed-off-by line to this patch as well.  I was involved in the patch creation.

  Signed-off-by: Denver Gingerich <denver@sfconservancy.org>

> ---
>  scripts/kernel_bump.sh | 3 +++
>  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/scripts/kernel_bump.sh b/scripts/kernel_bump.sh
> index b1c17d6c39..03e809eedc 100755
> --- a/scripts/kernel_bump.sh
> +++ b/scripts/kernel_bump.sh
> @@ -2,6 +2,9 @@
>  # SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
>  #
>  # Copyright (C) 2024 Olliver Schinagl <oliver@schinagl.nl>
> +#
> +# This script was implemented from scratch -- inspired by ideas shared
> +# with the OpenWrt project by Elliott Mitchell <ehem+openwrt@m5p.com>
>  
>  set -eu
>  if [ -n "${DEBUG_TRACE_SH:-}" ] && \
> -- 
> 2.30.2

If the community would like any additional formalities to include this Signed-off-by line, I'm happy to complete those.

Denver Gingerich
Director of Compliance
Software Freedom Conservancy
diff mbox series

Patch

diff --git a/scripts/kernel_bump.sh b/scripts/kernel_bump.sh
index b1c17d6c39..03e809eedc 100755
--- a/scripts/kernel_bump.sh
+++ b/scripts/kernel_bump.sh
@@ -2,6 +2,9 @@ 
 # SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
 #
 # Copyright (C) 2024 Olliver Schinagl <oliver@schinagl.nl>
+#
+# This script was implemented from scratch -- inspired by ideas shared
+# with the OpenWrt project by Elliott Mitchell <ehem+openwrt@m5p.com>
 
 set -eu
 if [ -n "${DEBUG_TRACE_SH:-}" ] && \